Nearly every anti-virus program takes hours to do a complete scan of a system. With some anti-virus products, much of that time is wasted scanning files that are not even virus carriers.

A lot of anti-virus scanners do this as a “feel good” for the customer, but I believe they’re actually doing these customers a disservice as they’ll put off running scans because they take so long.

Panda Software is turning this methodology upside down with its new NanoScan Web site. It’s an online virus scanner that looks for 800,000 types of known malware but only looks in the most likely places a malware hides so it’s extremely quick.

Panda also offers a free online virus scan that performs a more complete scan of a system but it takes much longer. If NanoScan found something, then it’s a good idea to run a complete scan with Panda TotalScan.

[Panda NanoScan]

Tags: anti-virus, antivirus, antivirus download, anti virus download